For more than two decades, the top US goal on North Korea has been to curb the regime's nuclear weapons and missile programs, which have nonetheless steadily advanced.

With a damning new United Nations report on North Korea's human rights record, the United States faces new pressure to take up what may be an even more difficult task -- persuading the totalitarian state to treat its own people better.

The UN Commission of Inquiry produced a 400-page probe of severe violations in North Korea including extermination, enslavement and sexual violence. Releasing the report Monday, the commission's Australian chair Michael Kirby said that the exposure of the abuse required action and drew comparisons to the Holocaust, saying: "At the end of the Second World War, so many people said, 'If only we had known.'"

The United States has already been increasingly outspoken about human rights in North Korea. Glyn Davies, the US pointman on North Korea, said in a June speech that Pyongyang needed to address human rights and its troubled relations with South Korea before improvement in ties with Washington.

But Scott Snyder, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said it was uncertain that human rights would figure in a tangible, integrated way if the United States ever resumes long-stalled talks with North Korea.

"The human rights issue is now more in the mix, but it's hard to say whether it's by default because there is no momentum in other areas," Snyder said.

Any attempt to link human rights to other diplomatic efforts on North Korea would likely face opposition from the regime's main ally China, which holds veto power on the UN Security Council. China played host to six-nation denuclearization talks that broke down in 2008.

US policymakers say that China has shown signs of losing patience with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, who last year defiantly ordered a third nuclear test and later executed his uncle and mentor.

But many analysts believe that China's chief concern is North Korea's internal stability, as it fears a flood of refugees and the loss of a buffer with the US-allied South.

China, which takes umbrage at criticism of its own rights record, has already rejected any move to refer North Korea's leadership to the International Criminal Court. The United States, for its part, has not ratified the Rome treaty that established the court in The Hague.

- A long-term effort -

Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a Washington-based advocacy group, acknowledged that the UN Security Council was unlikely to refer the case to the International Criminal Court in the near future.

The United States, while supportive of the Commission of Inquiry, would likely fear that discussion of the issue would prove counter-productive by aggravating China, Scarlatoiu said.

But campaigners can seize on the commission's findings so that the swath of UN sanctions on North Korea, imposed over the regime's nuclear and missile programs, become linked to human rights in the minds of governments and the public.

"It is really up to us human rights NGOs all over the world to raise awareness of what we can now confidently call crimes against humanity," Scarlatoiu said.

T. Kumar, international advocacy director at Amnesty International USA, said that the United States should focus on persuading all Security Council nations to support action so that China would be isolated if it stood by North Korea.

He warned it may backfire to tie human rights too closely to nuclear diplomacy on North Korea.

"The danger of bringing them together is that one issue will be compromised for the other issue, and the most likely issue that is going to be compromised is human rights," Kumar said.

The US Congress has been particularly active on human rights in North Korea. In 2004, it created a position of special envoy for human rights in North Korea and made it easier for refugees to enter the United States.

The debate comes as some US lawmakers urge a greater push on human rights as part of a breakthrough nuclear deal with Iran, which faces widespread criticism on rights but is significantly more open than North Korea.